Ike given civil-rights credit

Eisenhower granddaughter cites ’57 crisis,‘sense of justice’

— Susan Eisenhower, granddaughter of the World War II general who became the nation’s 34th president, was ending a speech Thursday when she looked at a woman seated on the front row and called her “one of my heroes.”

The woman was Elizabeth Eckford, one of the nine black students who broke racial barriers and attended Little Rock’s Central High School in 1957 after federal troops were dispatched to enforce desegregation.

Eisenhower - strategist, author and chairman emeritus of the Eisenhower Institute - focused her speech at the University of Central Arkansas on the civil-rights record of her grandfather, Dwight Eisenhower, the Republican president from 1953-61.

“I’m astounded that people don’t think Eisenhower was a leader in civil rights,” she said. “If he wasn’t, who was?”

Dwight Eisenhower was in his second term when he federalized the National Guard and sent the 101st Airborne Division troops to Central High on Sept. 24, 1957, a day after a violent crowd gathered outside the school, prompting the black students to be removed for their protection.

Earlier, on Sept. 2, 1957, Gov. Orval Faubus had sent Arkansas National Guardsmen to the school. Faubus said he called them out “to maintain ... the peace and good order of the community” and directed the Guard to prevent the nine blacks from entering the segregated school, notwithstanding a court-approved desegregation plan.

Faubus flew to Newport, R.I., for a conference with Eisenhower, but the two-hour meeting on Sept. 14 failed to resolve the crisis.

On Sept. 20, Faubus removed the guardsmen on the order of a federal judge.

Eisenhower praised Faubus for withdrawing the troops, calling the governor’s action “a necessary step in the right direction.” But the next week’s disorders at Central High led the president to federalize the Guard and send the 101st Airborne. The black students attended school the rest of the year under federal protection.

Susan Eisenhower - who is also president of the Eisenhower Group Inc., which provides strategic counsel on political, business and public-affairs projects - said her grandfather “had a strong sense of justice.”

She described him as a president who worked as an organizer behind the scenes.

“This did not mean Eisenhower wasn’t involved. This was ... a strategy of working through others,” she said. “Eisenhower was a leader ... as opposed to a star.”

Susan Eisenhower, who was 5 when the Central High crisis occurred, said the late president and five-star general sent the 101st Airborne to Little Rock rather than other troops for a reason.

There had been “grave concerns” that some National Guardsmen would not remain loyal to the federal government in a racial crisis, she said. But the 101st Airborne Division was the one that landed in Normandy, France, for DDay during World War II.

“I’m sure [he] understood the 101st Airborne Division would remain loyal to Dwight Eisenhower,” she said. These troops also were already trained for “riot control,” she said.

Another “lasting legacy” of her grandfather was his judicial appointments. Susan Eisenhower said he appointed five members to the U.S. Supreme Court, all of whom were desegregation advocates.

Further, she said, he signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first since Reconstruction, endorsed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and chastised Barry Goldwater, the unsuccessful Republican presidential candidate in 1964, for not doing so.

Susan Eisenhower also spoke of her grandfather’s other challenges. Among them was an end to the Korean War, but only as he had to begin coping with the increasingly frightening Cold War.

In 1953, the Soviet Union tested a hydrogen bomb. In 1957, less than two weeks after the Central High crisis, the Soviets launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite. The next year, the United States founded NASA.

Arkansas, Pages 10 on 02/24/2012

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